Euclid

            Euclid was a Greek mathematician, or maybe not. One of the most interesting things about Euclid is that not all historians agree that he was a real person. This report will provide information supporting both the idea that he did live and the thinking that he was really a group of mathematicians working under one name. While we don’t know his exact date of birth or date of death, we do know if he was real, he lived around 300 BC. Euclid was most likely educated, like most other Greek mathematicians, at Athens. In addition he was probably taught by one of Plato’s students. After his schooling Euclid moved to Alexandria. There he founded a school of mathematics and taught geometry.

            Euclid is best known for his work The Elements, which is a series of thirteen mathematics volumes. They cover numerous subjects such as plane geometry, proportion in general, the properties of numbers, incommensurable magnitudes, and solid geometry. The Elements has been the center of mathematics teaching for over two thousand years. Although The Elements is credited to Euclid he most likely did not prove any of the information in The Elements; he just compiled it. 

            Books such as: the Data, the Phenomena, the Optics, and several other books have also been credited to Euclid. It is thought by many historians that these are falsely connected to him, mainly because we hardly know anything about Euclid or his life. There are three primary hypotheses on Euclid’s life and on his connection to The Elements.

The first hypothesis is that Euclid really existed and wrote The Elements and some of or all the other works credited to him. There is plenty of evidence to support this theory and hardly any evidence that is inconsistent. Some of the only inconsistent evidence is that there are different writing styles in the 13 volumes of The Elements. This could be simply that, since he most likely based The Elements on previous works, that the original writer’s style is still evident. If this hypothesis is true, then Euclid most likely DID have a Mathematics school in Alexandria.

The second hypothesis is that Euclid was the leader of a team of mathematicians, most likely working in Alexandria. The group together wrote The Elements and some of or all of the other works credited to Euclid. They wrote the books under his name because he was the leader. It is even possible in this hypothesis that they continued writing books under his name, even after his death. The only evidence that supports this over hypothesis number one is that of the different writing styles. Euclid most likely still founded his school in this hypothesis.

The third hypothesis is that Euclid never existed. The Elements and some of or all of the other works credited to Euclid were written by a group of mathematicians, once again most likely based in Alexandria. Their code name of Euclid most likely came from Euclid of Megara, a historical figure who lived about a hundred years earlier. This hypothesis is probably the most unlikely of all three.

            Of all three hypotheses, number one and number two are most likely to be closest to the truth. It is unlikely, unless we find new evidence, that we will ever know the truth about Euclid. There will continue to be debates about his true identity for a long time to come because of The Element’s effect on modern math.  Although we do not know the complete true identity of its author, we do know that The Elements was one the most influential math works of the time.